Which is more terrifying: keeping up your high school status, or childbirth? Directors/writers Stephen Cedars and Benji Kleiman honor both painstaking enterprises in their furiously entertaining hor(ror)monal romp, Snatchers. Initial parallels to 2007’s Teeth fade quickly as the film splices Mean Girls DNA with Critters or Gremlins, or most appropriately, Slither. This is the kind of maternal midnighter that uproariously decapitates a gynecologist and coins the phrase “vag-cannon” while doomsday rages onward. It deals with single parenthood, safe sexual practices, and feisty gender “free pass” commentaries, all while nasty uterine buggers spatter Madre Vista bloody red. Read More »

(Welcome to The SXSW Diaries, where we will be chronicling every single movie we see at the Austin-based film festival.)

Welcome to SXSW 2019 day three. In this edition: The Art of Self-Defense is masterful dark comedy about masculinity gone wrong, The Highwaymen is perfectly decent dad-tainment, Booksmart redefines the high school comedy for 2019, and Snatchers can’t quite capture its tricky blend of comedy and horror.